Samuel Watson, “Trusting to ‘the Chapter of Accidents’: Contingency, Necessity, and Self-Constraint in Jeffersonian National Security Policy,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 973-1000.

James Madison faced a difficult war because of Republican antipathy to taxation, debt, standing armies, federal aid to infrastructure, and a national bank. Many Republicans shared Thomas Jefferson’s faith that an untrained militia could easily conquer Canada, but they did not improve militia training or administration. Indeed, Jefferson gutted the army’s fledgling supply organization in 1802, an act far more significant for the War of 1812 than the creation of the Military Academy. Jefferson boxed himself and his successor into a corner by refusing to negotiate with Britain on realistic terms and by relying on commercial sanctions that damaged the economy and devastated revenues. Reactive and backward-looking, the Jeffersonian Republicans refused to match ends and means and failed to create a viable deterrent or alternative to war.

J. C. A. Stagg, “United States Army Officers in the War of 1812: A Statistical and Behavioral Portrait,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1001-34.

Addressing one aspect of the larger problem of the U.S. Army’s often poor performance during the War of 1812, this essay focuses on the War Department’s attempt to create a competent officer corps. The article provides data about the officers’ social origins and discusses their difficulties in performing their duties, as revealed in the transcripts of 334 general courts martial. The conclusions suggest that officers were judged more severely for their moral and character defects than for their shortcomings in performing routine duties. These findings also explain why, unlike their European counterparts in the Napoleonic era, most U.S. Army officers failed to achieve the necessary degree of proficiency.

Michael J. Crawford, “U.S. Navy Petty Officers in the Era of the War of 1812,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1035-51.

Navies in the age of sail required artisans familiar with the working of a sailing vessel as well as a warship’s operations. The years 1797 to 1812 were formative for the body of skilled petty officers on whom commissioned and warrant officers relied to turn their armed ships into effective instruments of warfare. This essay provides an overview of the early U.S. Navy’s process of recruiting and training petty officers, how the character of subordination and discipline was negotiated between commissioned and lesser officers, and the petty officers’ life aboard ship in the era of the War of 1812.

Jeremy Black, “The North American Theater Of The Napoleonic Wars, Or, As It Is Sometimes Called, The War Of 1812,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1053-66.

The Anglo-American conflict of 1812–15, “the War of 1812,” provides an opportunity for considering the nature of warfare in the early nineteenth century and, also, the opportunities and problems that Britain, the world’s leading naval power, enjoyed as it sought to balance wide-ranging commitments.

Kevin D. McCranie, “The War of 1812 in the Ongoing Napoleonic Wars: The Response of Britain’s Royal Navy,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1067-94.

It proved difficult for Britain’s Royal Navy to fight the War of 1812 while already at war with France. This ongoing conflict had lasted for nearly two decades and had left Britain with few reserves. Moreover, war with America necessitated a massive westward shift in naval deployments even while the European war intensified with Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the expansion of Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign. The following article analyzes how the Royal Navy balanced operations between Napoleon’s Empire and the United States with an emphasis on 1812 and 1813.

Donald E. Graves, “Why the White House Was Burned: An Investigation into the British Destruction of Public Buildings at Washington in August 1814,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1095-1127.

The War of 1812 is a conflict that carries an unduly heavy burden of mythology, much of it propagated by nineteenth-century historians and deriving mainly from national chauvinism. In this respect, one of the most misunderstood events of the war is the British destruction of public buildings in Washington in August 1814. This article examines the background of that event and discusses whether it was justified, either under the laws of war, as they were understood at the time, or in retaliation for the American destruction of Canadian towns and villages in the northern theatre.

John P. Bowes, “Transformation and Transition: American Indians and the War of 1812 in the Lower Great Lakes,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1129-46.

To better understand American Indian participation in the War of 1812 it is necessary to step away from the narrative constructed by men like President James Madison and General William Henry Harrison, who saw a dangerous British-Indian alliance wherever they turned. Similarly, it is helpful to avoid using the Treaty of Ghent as a narrative endpoint. Therefore, instead of seeing the War of 1812 as a singular event and its conclusion as an end point, this article places the conflict and its Indian participants within a broad chronological context. Such an extended framework helps to explain why Indians were divided in response to the war and to illustrate how it connected developments that came before and after. Rather than addressing some type of composite Indian story, the article focuses on the Wyandot communities in the Old Northwest, whose lives were intertwined with those of their native neighbors and whose histories reveal that while the War of 1812 was undoubtedly transformative, it is best viewed as a transition rather than as a conclusion.

Frederick C. Leiner, “‘The Sport of Arbitrary Men’: The Privateer Nonsuch and a Search at Sea in the War of 1812,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1147-64.

In the War of 1812, the United States had a small navy and relied on privateers—private armed ships that sought to make money—to engage in commercial warfare against Britain. If privateers stopped a British merchant ship, or an American trading under a British license, they sailed it into a friendly port. If deemed a “good prize,” the vessel and goods were sold, the net proceeds divided between the privateer’s owners, officers, and crew. But sometimes, the stop and search went beyond the bounds of law: the seizure of the Ann Maria, a tiny Virginia schooner, off St. Thomas, by the Baltimore privateer Nonsuch, led all the way to the Supreme Court, and reveals the dark side of a system based on legalized robbery.

Richard Jensen, “Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1165-82.

Wikipedia has become the world’s dominant educational resource, with over four million articles in the English language edition that reach hundreds of millions of readers. Wikipedia is written by and for the benefit of highly motivated amateurs. Military history is one of its strengths, with over 50,000 articles and over 700 well-organized volunteers who prevent mischief and work on upgrading quality. They rely on free online sources and popular books, and generally ignore historiography and scholarly monographs and articles. The military articles are old-fashioned, with an emphasis on tactics, battles, and technology, and are weak on social and cultural dimensions. This essay examines how the 14,000-word article on the “War of 1812” was worked on by 2,400 different people, with no overall coordinator or plan. Debates raged as the 1812 article attracted over 3,300 comments by 627 of the most active editors. The main dispute was over who won the war.

Research Note:

James R. Arnold, “Winfield Scott Makes a Name for Himself,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1183-85.

Review Essay:

John R. Grodzinski, “Opening Shots from the Bicentenary of the War of 1812: A Canadian Perspective on Recent Titles,” The Journal of Military History 76 #4 (October 2012): 1187-1201.

Reviews: The War of 1812How Britain Won the War of 1812: The Royal Navy’s Blockade of the United States, 1812-1815, by Brian Arthur, reviewed by Spencer C. Tucker, 1204-5

The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812, by Troy Bickham, reviewed by Richard Buel, Jr., 1205-6

The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon, by Jeremy Black, reviewed by David Curtis Skaggs, 1206-8

Perilous Fight: America’s Intrepid War with Britain on the High Seas, 1812-1815, by Stephen Budiansky, reviewed by Michael J. Crawford, 1208-9

Strange Fatality: The Battle of Stoney Creek, 1813, by James E. Elliot, reviewed by John R. Grodzinski, 1211-12

Illinois in the War of 1812, by Gillum Ferguson, reviewed by John W. Hall, 1212-13

First Campaign of an A.D.C.: The War of 1812 Memoir of Lieutenant William Jenkins Worth, United States Army, edited by Donald E. Graves, reviewed by Richard V. Barbuto, 1213-14

The Rockets’ Red Glare: An Illustrated History of the War of 1812, by Donald R. Hickey and Connie D. Clark; 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism, by Nicole Eustace, reviewed by David Curtis Skaggs, 1214-16

The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, by Donald R. Hickey, reviewed by William B. Skelton, 1217-18

187 Things You Should Know About the War of 1812, by Donald R. Hickey, reviewed by Christopher T. George, 1218-20

The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812, by Andrew Lambert, reviewed by Kevin D. McCranie, 1220-21

1812: War with America, by Jon Latimer, reviewed by Richard V. Barbuto, 1222-23

A Matter of Honour: The Life, Campaigns, and Generalship of Isaac Brock, by Jonathon Riley, reviewed by John R. Grodzinski, 1223-24

Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy, by David Curtis Skaggs, reviewed by Robert Malcomson, 1224-25

The War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent, by J.C.A. Stagg, reviewed by John R. Grodzinski, 1225-27

The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812, edited by Spencer C. Tucker, reviewed by J. C. A. Stagg , 1227-28

Reviews:With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War North, by Carol Reardon, reviewed by Michael A. Bonura and by Samuel Watson, 1229-32